Geneva Conventions

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Challenging Times Ahead: Australia’s War Crimes Prosecutions

On Tuesday, 7 April 2026, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, was arrested and charged with five counts of the war crime of murder. He is the second soldier charged following Australia’s Brereton Inquiry, which, in November 2020, found credible information of 23 incidents of unlawful killing and two incidents of cruel treatment by Australian Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2013 (for further detail see here). The other person against whom charges have been laid, Oliver Schulz, was arrested in March 2023 and committed to trial in August 2025. Schulz has pleaded not guilty to the crimes. The trial is currently expected to commence in 2027.  Domestically, these trials raise complex legal, evidentiary and procedural issues that will test Australia’s capacity to prosecute international crimes. More broadly, this represents a key opportunity to explore the distinct challenges raised by prosecuting international crimes in a common law system.

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Once Again in Belgium: Prosecuting a Colonial Crime – The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba

In December 2024, a Belgian Court of Appeal recognised the civil liability of the Belgian State for a colonial crime committed in the Belgian Congo between 1948 and 1953. In the Métis case, as already addressed by scholars, the Court held that the Belgian policy of systematically removing children born to a Black mother and a…

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From Gaza to Lebanon: Forcible Displacement Dressed in Humanitarian Garb

In recent hostilities, first in the Gaza Strip and now in Lebanon, the Israeli military has adopted a new modus operandi: issuing blanket relocation directives instructing millions of people to indefinitely leave their places of residence (evacuation orders in Lebanon were discussed here). The apparent objective is to enable Israel to engage an enemy embedded in densely…

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Evacuation Orders: An Unlawful Use of Precautionary Measures?

Introduction Around 800,000 Lebanese residents have been displaced so far since the beginning of this round of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. On 2 March 2026, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) issued evacuation orders directing residents of villages and towns in southern Lebanon to leave their homes and move north of the Litani River, effectively…

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Neutrality at Sea in Practice: Rescue, Internment, and Warship Repairs in a Contemporary Naval Conflict

Recent naval incidents in the Indian Ocean involving Iranian warships, the United States, and regional coastal States have drawn renewed attention to a body of law often assumed to belong to another era: the law of neutrality at sea. Reports that an Iranian warship was sunk by a US submarine south of Sri Lanka, followed…

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